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https://medium.com/p/f471e8225b81Sat, 23 Jul 2016 07:58:13 GMT2016-07-29T19:26:21.263ZI decided to take a seat and then I met Justin. After a short jog from my house to the park, I decided to sit in the grass and relax underneath the sun.

I have been living in a accelerated pace for the past three years and I know I need to make space for quiet. So I just decided to take a sit and breathe.

Sit, and breathe.

Surely if I can do that everyday I will have more tolerance for stress. Most people try to avoid stress but unfortunately I can’t afford the luxury. I love being an entrepreneur, taking risks, building teams and with that comes stress. So I accept stress: it enables me to live a happy life. But I need to make space for quiet.

It was then that I saw Justin hopping over the fence of the park’s children play area.

He was struggling to put his pants up and had his shoes on his hands. He was agitated and you could easily see he was drunk. He stumbled on his way and somehow decided to approach me.

Then he asked if he could sit next to me for a while. Of course Justin.

Justin had watery eyes and looked like a wreck. While he struggled with his shoes I noticed he had nothing else but an ID card and some tobacco. He was homeless, drunk, sad and desperate. And he had just woken up.

(I’ve been in that place before. I know that place Justin. We begin again my friend, we don’t give up.)

So we talked. He had walked away from home. He told me about his mom. About his Portuguese cousin. I told him I lived around the area. Told him I had two kids. I told him about the lowest points in my life: About every single time I hit rock bottom. Then I told him I had met many other people that did wonderful things coming from a place of despair.

When we have nothing to loose and everything is on the line you learn that the only big risk in life is to miss out on living. So get back on your feet Justin, work hard, and wish for good luck.

This is the real life for the unsheltered. For those who had it hard. Those who still have it hard. For those who drink themselves to sleep because they would be too afraid to do it otherwise. An easy life is not a beautiful life. You learn when challenged. And sometimes that comes with immense amounts of pain. So get back up again Justin. Begin again my friend.

One of the many hypocrisies of today’s world. Our world is shaped by people that once had nothing to loose and made brave decisions in the face of adversity. The troublemakers. The foolish ones. It’s the inventions of those very same people that fuel today’s wealth inequality and increased unemployment. Because in a capitalist society the only thing you can win is money. And money is the worse possible reward.

I’m sure most entrepreneurs would go out of their way to find a safer place for Justin to sleep. So he didn’t have to cry himself to bed with whiskey at age 16. But instead we helped build a society that offers him no shelter. A society we criticize but explore. A society where we accept inhumanity as a side effect of us being happy lives. And I am as guilty as everyone else.

I asked Justin why that park. He told me it was the park of his childhood. He used to walk those paths when he was just three years old. He used to go see the animals with his family. Play ball with his dad.

This where the desperation came from: everything he believed was safe had failed him. The park was a reminder of feeling safe. He has lost that feeling for good.

Personally, I have no almost memories of being a child. But I remember the feeling, the moment, the smell of the first time I lost safe. I remember the water fountain close by, the pavement, the ocean in the background. There and then, I knew I was by myself. I was seven.

We all have to find our own path. I told him about being calm in the face of adversity, staying positive. I told him about being resilient. Not giving up.

Begin again Justin.

Sometimes it’s more important to find your own balance and take a breathe, especially when the world falls apart.

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https://medium.com/p/702339e275cdSat, 16 Jul 2016 20:41:51 GMT2016-07-16T20:41:51.781ZYesterday I had the chance to listen to an improvised talk by John Donahoe, former CEO of eBay as part of my studies in Stanford.

John is incredibly insightful and comes across as trustworthy and authentic. I was surprised with how someone so accomplished was able to relate with the audience on such a personal and intimate level. He was, to a certain extent, the representation of what “great leader” means to many entrepreneurs. What most aspire to be.

John delivered a great talk and you almost expect that of him. He talked about books that he felt he could relate to, change agents that helped him during his tenure, about failing and getting back on your feet, how a good strategy must be outside in, and about the four key aspects you should strategize around: Customers, Competitors, Capabilities and Culture. He explained how he always tried to communicate with his team by framing evolution as “from -> to”, so people could easily (and clearly) relate to the change that sometimes is required in businesses. He then defined what it means for him to be a good leader, saying that people will follow those who are “Authentic” and “Get it”.

This was an amazing talk followed by a great and honest discussion. But this was not the most important lesson.

The most important lesson was the framework John uses when responding to failure and inspiring organizational change during adversity.

When faced with strategic issues leaders often realize they need to change their organizations. However this is not easy: People oppose change, power users might call you a killjoy or worse, good management works hard to protect revenues, etc. This makes it extremely hard to champion change especially when the business is apparently doing well. Good leaders see early signs of inflection points in their businesses and instinctively know they need to act. But how do you promote and establish change when everything seems to be going well?

This was the most important business lesson I’ve learned here. An elegant and simple way to get buy in from your shareholders, employees, and key stakeholders:

Label the problem

Propose and justify the strategic solution

Put the right people in the right place

In John’s case the challenge was to transition eBay from being an online auction site. So he could label the problem: it simply wasn’t economically feasible for eBay to continue to be “niched” in auctions when most customers used eBay to simply purchased goods. Auctions was just a legacy by-product of the evolution of eBay.

The future was a simpler, more consumer friendly experience focused on mobile platforms. That was how consumers wanted to purchase goods online. This was the strategic solution.

Finally John needs to put the right people in the right place to do this transition. Everyone wants to be liked and John was no exception. But he had to accept some people will not want to be part of change and they won’t like you or buy into your change. They will not help. Thus it’s important to have the people involved that want to be part of that change; or like my peer Rudi de Sousa keeps saying it’s all about “Attitude and Aptitude”. And we need to be deliberate making our choices, and only taking on the journey those who want to be on the ride.

I found this simple framework to be fantasticly insightful and useful, and it’s a lesson I’ll probably use many times in the future of YLD.

]]>https://nunojob.com/the-most-important-lesson-702339e275cd?source=rss----26404b0bd31f---4http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NunoJob/~3/HJn79CehgTk/fairness-12535e002cce
https://medium.com/p/12535e002cceThu, 26 May 2016 13:48:48 GMT2016-05-28T23:35:53.830ZHard choices are a common denominator to all businesses. By far the largest struggle when growing into a management position, and consequently to a leadership position is to deal with these choices on a daily basis.

Making decisions involves a variety of factors that you must consider: company vision, short term business goals, alignment with your team, personal development, networking goals, etc. Humans, however, are traditionally well equiped to deal with these challenges.

The question then lies in knowing how to make decisions that fall outside our previous experiences.

Structure, processes, operational excellent, education, they all help. But they can never give you the definitive answer to all questions. Nor is there one. Good or wrong can only be evaluated by the outcomes. Personally this translates to happy people working to a common goal.

So what does fairness have to do with making decisions? How can fairness be used as tool for effective leadership?

I’ve always been a huge fan of organised team sports. When young some of my most formative moments came from playing in a team. Sports have simple ways to evaluate success: winner takes all the merits, and you compete to win every game.

I believe a good team player is better than an outstanding player that is unwilling to compromise for the best of the team. Outstanding teams perform better when they share common goals, and you can (and should) build your personal goals on the back of what you reach as a team.

However effective sport managers sometimes make decisions that do not help the team to win.

Maybe the coach is giving an opportunity to someone that put in a lot of effort but was still not at the right level. Or it might have been that someone was excellent in attacking movements but that was unwilling to provide adequate support in defensive movements.

Compromises exist but when the manager takes a firm decision and loses trust in a member of the squad it is time to take measures.

Sometimes that means benching a star performer.

Research in psychology recognises that “educated guess” is often right, and the manager knows the choice to make. However, we all second doubt ourselves. And to make matters worse manager normally love their team, and that includes people that create potential problems. Personal circunstances can exacerbate this issue, and the manager will end up delaying a decision that is already made.

This is where fairness comes as a great way to help you make fantastic decisions. When in doubt reflect if the decisions you made are fair to the person affected as well as the team.

If you are second guessing yourself the most likely scenario is that:

It is not fair to the person: You already made up your mind independently of what is the best decision, and you did it without prejudice. By trying to be nice you are actually being inconsiderate and deceitful. Yes, it hurts to sit on the bench. But it’s much worse not to know what is happening and getting mixed signals, especially on personally challenging circunstances. You are not helping the person by delaying, and you are not being a good leader to that person.

It is not fair to the team: The team wants to win the league, and just like you they probably (hopefully) feel empathy towards the individual. But empathy is not the name of the competition, and the team is still reaching for the same goal. Other less used members of the team are working hard to have an opportunity to show their value. And the team will loose more as consequence of “delayed leadership”. Morale will go down and people will feel helpless. When they needed leadership you shown compassion. That was good. But you didn’t offer a way forward and instead you became part of the problem.

Fairness also involves consistency. To be fair the treatment given to one person in one circunstance should not differ from the treatment given to another person in the same circunstances.

Not being consistent creates a cascading effect. Morale can be devastating to teams, and if you are not consistent in your behavior people will feel unfairly treated. Once that happens normally people check out, and they might not be productive ever again. You now have an unsolvable problem: you created an exception to the way you treat everyone based on second guessing yourself but you know you can’t do it all the time. If you deny the same treatement to another member of the team, they will feel it is unfair. If you offer the same treatment you will go down the rabbit hole.

Humans value fairness.

And when making a hard decision always consider the effects it has on your team first.

Not the effect it has on you.

Not the effect on the affected person.

After you decide what is fair and set a course of action do your best to make sure the affected team member can recover as quickly as possible.

If you feel it’s too late, and you are too deep in the rabbit hole: Don’t. It will hurt break the cycle but it can only bring positive change going forward, no matter how hard it is to you personally.